No Profit In Ending Poverty

[Hannah Bell]

Here's an extremely sobering, depressing, thought-provoking interview with the creator of the acclaimed HBO series The Wire. David Simon was a crime reporter for twelve years with The Baltimore Sun before turning to a career in television. Here's an excerpt from the interview, conducted by the inimitable Bill Moyers.

DAVID SIMON: The people most affected . . . are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. . . . (E)conomically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. . . (S)ince we basically have become a market-based culture and it's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad denouement, I think we're going to follow market-based logic, right to the bitter end.

BILL MOYERS: Which says?

DAVID SIMON: If you don't need 'em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you're doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There's no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them.

Simon's solution?

I would decriminalize drugs in a heartbeat. I would put all the interdiction money, all the incarceration money, all the enforcement money, all of the pretrial, all the prep, all of that cash, I would hurl it, as fast as I could, into drug treatment and job training and jobs programs. I would rather turn these neighborhoods inward with jobs programs. Even if it was the equivalent of the urban CCC, if it was New Deal-type logic, it would be doing less damage than creating a war syndrome, where we're basically treating our underclass. The drug war is a war on the underclass now. That's all it is. It has no other meaning.

http://transformeducation.blogspot.com/2009/04/no-profit-in-ending-poverty.html

[yourout]

1. We really have become a country of "Ferengi".

<http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wakefield/ferenghi.html>

The Complete Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

1. Once you have their money, never give it back *
2. You can't cheat an honest customer, but it never hurts to try
4. Sex and profit are the two things that never last long enough
5. If you can't break a contract, bend it
6. Never let family stand in the way of opportunity *
7. Always keep your ears open *
8. Keep a count of your change
9. Instinct plus opportunity equals profit *
10. A dead customer can't buy as much as a live one
11. Latinum isn't the only thing that shines
12. Anything worth selling is worth selling twice
13. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money
14. Anything stolen is pure profit
15. Acting stupid is often smart
16. A deal is a deal (...until a better one comes along) *
17. A bargain usually isn't
18. A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all *
19. Don't lie too soon after a promotion
20. When the customer is sweating, turn up the heat
21. Never place friendship before profit *
22. Wise men can hear profit in the wind *
23. Never take the last coin, but be sure to get all the rest
24. Never ask when you can take
25. Fear makes a good business partner
26. The vast majority of the rich in this galaxy did not inherit their wealth; they stole it
27. The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down
28. Morality is always defined by those in power
29. When someone says "It's not the money," they're lying
30. Talk is cheap; synthehol costs money
31. Never make fun of a Ferengi's mother *
32. Be careful what you sell. It may do exactly what the customer expects
33. It never hurts to suck up to the boss *
34. Too many Ferengi can't laugh at themselves anymore
35. Peace is good for business *
36. War is good for business *
37. You can always buy back a lost reputation
38. Free advertising is cheap
39. Praise is cheap. Heap it generously on all customers
40. If you see profit on a journey, take it
41. Money talks, but having lots of it gets more attention
42. Only negotiate when you are certain to profit
43. Caressing an ear is often more forceful than pointing a weapon
44. Never argue with a loaded phaser
45. Profit has limits. Loss has none
46. Labour camps are full of people who trusted the wrong person
47. Never trust a man wearing a better suit than your own *
48. The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife *
49. Old age and greed will always overcome youth and talent
................

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Indeed! Where would we get slave labor from if we didn't have the poor?

Seriously, there's no incentive for the well-off to end poverty.

Unless they have a conscience. Which some do...

[Lost4words]

4. damn few, and since their not standing against, they are therefor complicit

and deserve the consequences.

[starroute]

6. These people aren't even slave labor any more

They're not being exploited in sweatshops. They're just being walled in and left to die.

The bottom line is that it now takes fewer workers to feed and house and clothe everybody than there are people needing to be fed and housed and clothed. And until we solve that problem, we will always have an underclass.

Forty years ago, this country was still ready to pay the cost of welfare as a way of keeping the underclass from rioting and burning down the inner cities. But eventually they decided that a beefed up police and prison system was a cheaper way of accomplishing the same thing -- or if not cheaper, at least more effective at scaring the middle class into toeing the line as well.

That neat three-tier system of haves, have-lesses, and have-nothings is now being disrupted by the inability of even the middle class to keep its head above water. But where things will go from here is anybody's guess.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[Turbineguy]

5. The bizarre thing is that those who commit crimes provide

profit for those who do not. Perhaps not directly, but economics is very much shaped like a pyramid with those at the bottom carrying those above them. The way the system functions is that crime is profitable for all of us at the expense of the victims and criminals alike.

Consider the criminal who breaks into a house and does damage. Employment is provided to police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, insurance companies, builders, the entire chain of the economy benefits except the criminal and the victim.

The technical improvements in car stereo equipment, at its bottom, was driven by dope addicts breaking into cars.

[Newest Reality]

7. The middle-class is a useful creation ....

because they serve between the true owners of us all and the lower, hard-working class. They also faithfully buy certain, profitable items that the organs of the plutocrats produce, whereas the poor have a more limited fare of necessities.

It seems that the lower rungs of that manager class is now and endangered and one can guess where their new mobility will take them on the scale of poor to rich.

The underclass is growing rapidly and there is plenty of room in poverty for them.